AI + Design

This weekend I participated in a design event called DASH organized by Aaltoes. The main event Dash “is the largest design-focused hackathon ever organized in Europe” like they state on their website.The event I went to was their first DASH conference with a theme of AI + design. The speakers were from Forekind, Hellon and Zalando. Overall, the event gave quite a nice overview of the subject and made me think of the ways in which I could use AI in my own work.

The terms artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning are a hot topic right now. Therefore, I feel like those terms should be understood in order to stay in the game. Like Hellon´s Data Science Lead, Niko Reunanen mentioned in his speech, it is just matter of time when people start to implement AI in their design toolkits which will make the design process more efficient and at the same time unbeatable.

In the new book “The new wave of design” (2017) published by Design Forum Finland they have also described this new area of design. They define these terms as follows:

“Artificial intelligence (AI) = means the combination of developed technologies which helps products and services to observe, think, act and learn constantly from their environment and users.

The design of AI = If before the subject for design was the relationship between user and service, now the focus is in the relationship between human and AI. It is based on the idea where they both teach each others through a service. The digital product and service design are moving towards new ways of doing when more and more the products and services we use daily are done through AI.”

In other words, the time to think about how could I/you use artificial intelligence and machine learning in my/your work is now. For example, how might we make more personalized services with the use of data? Zalando is trying to think of the ways in which to give better and more personalized recommendations during an online shopping experience. Whereas, Hellon is thinking of the ways in which to make the soft data (experiences and feelings) into more hard data. Furthermore, how to turn this data later on into meaningful customer experiences.

To conclude, it seems like AI is becoming like a second opinion which is helping to choose the right direction. In the event, everyone agreed that it is not replacing designer but making them stronger and more efficient. However, we are not there yet, the journey is just beginning.